Wade Goodwyn

Wade Goodwyn is an NPR National Desk Correspondent covering Texas and the surrounding states.

Reporting since 1991, Goodwyn has covered a wide range of issues, from mass shootings and hurricanes to Republican politics. Whatever it might be, Goodwyn covers the national news emanating from the Lone Star State.

Though a journalist, Goodwyn really considers himself a storyteller. He grew up in a Southern storytelling family and tradition, he considers radio an ideal medium for narrative journalism. While working for a decade as a political organizer in New York City, he began listening regularly to WNYC, which eventually led him to his career as an NPR reporter.

In a recent profile, Goodwyn's voice was described as being "like warm butter melting over BBQ'd sweet corn." But he claims, dubiously, that his writing is just as important as his voice.

Goodwyn is a graduate of the University of Texas with a degree in history. He lives in Dallas with his famliy.

Jury selection is set to begin Friday for the white former Dallas police officer who shot and killed her unarmed black neighbor in his apartment last year. Amber Guyger said she entered the apartment by mistake and thought 26-year-old Botham Shem Jean was a burglar.

The Boy Scouts of America's own records show that more than 12,000 children have been sexually assaulted while participating in the organization's programs. The documents came to light through court testimony given by a researcher whom the Scouts had hired to do an internal review. The records reveal allegations against thousands of Scout leaders — allegations that date from the 1940s.

With such a huge number of victims, the organization could be facing multiple lawsuits and, as a result, bankruptcy.

On Aug. 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was gruesomely lynched in the small town of Money, Miss. He was a boy from Chicago, visiting his relatives. Although the case is now 63 years old, a recent book has spurred the Department of Justice to reopen the investigation into his death.

If you arrived at Beto O'Rourke's recent town hall meeting in San Antonio even 40 minutes ahead of time, you were out of luck. All 650 seats were already taken.

It was one sign that the El Paso Democratic congressman has set Texas Democrats on fire this year, as he takes on Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's re-election bid.

Texas Democrats have been wandering in the electoral wilderness for two decades — 1994 was the last time they won a statewide race — but at O'Rourke's events, they have been showing up in droves. Often, it's standing room only.

In hospitals across the country, anesthesiologists and other doctors are facing significant shortages of injectable opioids. Drugs such as morphine, Dilaudid and fentanyl are the mainstays of intravenous pain control and are regularly used in critical care settings like surgery, intensive care units and hospital emergency departments.

Twenty years ago Saturday, two middle school students outside Jonesboro, Ark., lured their 11- and 12-year-old classmates out of school and opened fire from across the playground. They killed four students, all girls, and a teacher, wounding 10 others.

When the Columbine High School shooting occurred the following year in Littleton, Colo., the horror at Westside Middle School was, in effect, superseded. As the years passed, Columbine became the touchstone, the school shooting everyone remembered. And it left the survivors in Jonesboro feeling forgotten and even more bereft.

Two filmmakers from Amarillo, Texas, released their debut film about the death of a young man in the late '90s after a jocks-versus-punks brawl that got widespread national attention and exposed deep divisions in the city. The film, Bomb City, carries a nickname for Amarillo, the only city in the country with a nuclear assembly plant.

The rain's coming in sheets as folks file into the Douglas Community Center in Pittsburg, Texas, population 4,707.

The organizers of an event for Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke have set out 50 chairs, but they're worried now that's going to be too many. But by the time the candidate bounces through the door, they're unfolding dozens more chairs as the crowd zooms past 100.

Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, was an early supporter of President Trump and often praises him. But he says he has not heard directly from Trump since the president said he was seriously considering pardoning Arpaio on a recent conviction for criminal contempt of court.

At an event Wednesday night, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was met by about 150 protesters who oppose the Senate's efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. On a hot evening, they stood outside a hotel in McKinney, a north Dallas suburb, shouting "shame on Ted" and "save Medicaid."

The by-invitation, town hall-style event was held one day after the senator's appearance in McAllen was disrupted by protesters concerned about health care as well as immigration.

Three days before the Dallas Street Choir leaves for New York, its traveling members are assembled and listening intently to choir director Jonathan Palant. He makes an announcement about yet one more phase of preparation: haircuts at 12:45 for anybody who wants one.

Kristen Hotopp stands in the front yard of her well-worn East Austin home, where she has lived for the past 17 years. She points across the street at an attractive, nearly new, two-story home — by far the nicest on the block.

"There are two units on this lot," Hotopp says. "There's a house in the back that's smaller and a house upfront. We're getting investors descending upon the area and buying up a lot of these properties."

The Big 12 Conference decided Wednesday to impose a multi-million dollar sanction on Baylor University after another recent round of stinging revelations about the extent and nature of the university's problems with alleged sexual assaults by former members of its football team.

Last year, the Texas legislature approved a $350 million cut in Medicaid reimbursement rates to early childhood intervention therapists and providers. The cuts, made to help balance a billion dollars in property tax relief, affect the most vulnerable Texas children — those born extremely prematurely or with Down syndrome or other genetic conditions that put them at risk for developmental delay.